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If it wasn’t the 1940 US census, then the main topic for discussion this week seems to have been the anniversary of sinking of the Titanic, and it can only get worse as we approach the actual day of the anniversary next week.

As you might have guessed from the tone of the previous sentence I am not particularly interested in the Titanic (although possibly slightly more than the 1940 census), whether it is films, television programmes, books, passenger lists or crew records.

One thing I did find interesting however was this article from the BBC News website, Five Titanic myths spread by films, which takes a more skeptical view of some of the myths that have arisen around the Titanic.

Whilst on the subject of the BBC, you might want to take a look at the BBC Archive’s Survivors of the Titanic collection, which gives a taste of the organisation’s output over the years, including interviews with survivors.

In the meantime I will try to summon up some enthusiasm for the anniversary between now and the 14th April.

Like this:

I have been rather distracted this evening by the BBC Archive website, they have some great material on there. Unfortunately if you live outside the UK you won’t be able to watch the videos, but there are still other documents you can read, but that is not quite the same is it!

What lead me there were the documents relating to George Orwell, but I soon got distracted by the Steam Trains Collection. Being a lover of steam trains I was in heaven. The children’s newsreel “A Dog’s Day Out” is quite charming, a short silent film about a dog taking a day trip to Eastbourne, Sussex by train. Michael Palin’s “Confessions of a Train Spotter” is another excellent programme (which I do have on video somewhere).

I just wish you all could watch them as well. I can see I will be spending a lot more time here in the near future.